The need for this invention arises from surgical practice, particularly surgical practice using laparoscopic instruments involving small incisions, with a television camera inserted in one of the incisions to view the field of the operation inside the patient and surgical instruments inserted in other incisions and manipulated from outside the patient's body using a TV screen visualization, usually enlarged, to guide the work.
Anything that can reduce the number of steps to be performed in such an operation can markedly reduce the stress, both on the patient and on the doctor. Surgeons performing such operations are under considerable stress because remote manipulation using TV for visualization, rather than seeing the site of the operation directly requires the learning of a great many techniques that are radically different from those performed when the surgical site is open to view. These include indirect hand-eye coordination, and cooperation between surgeons to place and secure sutures.
The placing of sutures during a laparoscopic procedure typically requires two surgeons to cooperate in a multi-step process performed with multiple surgical instruments to manipulate the needle and the suture and pass it back and forth from one to the other, cooperation in tying the knot, etc. This invention arose from the difficulty of such manipulations.
Additionally, coagulation and clips, such as "hemo clips", have reduced many of the needs for endoscopic suturing. However, when one considers the need to suture repair ovaries, uterus, seromuscular defects, enterotomies, systomies, pelvic defects, various suspension procedures i.e. vaginal vault and sacrospinous, one must realize there is a continual need to keep the art of endoscopic suturing to the forefront. The endoscopic suturing must be so simple that it be easily learned, hence easily remembered. The learning curve in endoscopic suturing is inversely proportional to the number of steps required to do the suturing; i.e. the fewer steps required the easier it is to learn and teach the endoscopic suturing technique. It is the purpose of the present invention to provide a structure, which makes it easier to learn and teach an endoscopic suturing technique.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,585 is believed, presently, to be the closest prior art reference.